Mark Andrews: Yes, it's time to bring real games back to the table

Well, no Kenneth, that wasn't the first question which sprang to mind.

In fact I would be so bold as to suggest that down the proverbial Dog and Duck, the most common reaction to that news would be more along the lines of 'what are you talking about, man?'

It's become a strange world, computer-based recreation. There was a time when it all seemed pretty innocuous. Fun even, back in the day when playing Pong on the old Decca Viscount was a passport to instant cool.

But these days it doesn't seem much fun at all. It all seems serious, a strange subculture of unintelligible websites and pasty-faced young men in darkened rooms frantically pounding away at their joysticks.

At least that's what it looks like in the BT adverts, anyway.

Another one of these arcane websites brings us the big exclusive that 'Activision have something in the works with Tony Hawk', and that 'more info is coming soon'.

Check you, dude.

Tony Hawk, it transpires, is a one-time skateboarder who used to be known as The Birdman. His 'something in the works' is an online skateboarding game.

Sorry, come again? How can you have online skateboarding? Is it the hi-tech equivalent of in-line skating?

I suppose if any sport is suitable for the games-console treatment, it's skateboarding. Yes, it looks good on telly, where the experts perform stylish acrobatics in the air, but in real life it seems to be more about baggy-trousered teens shuffling around the car park at Asda.

But that doesn't explain the market for computer-based football games. Particularly when the best football game of the lot – well apart from football, that is – involves nothing more sophisticated than a green tablecloth and 22 plastic inch-high figurines.

Subbuteo, now you're talking. The old standard set came with two teams of players in generic blue and red kits, who I always assumed to be Ipswich and Liverpool.

But they knew how to squeeze a few extra pounds out of the kids. I paid around £1.85 for the Aston Villa team, the box of which was also stamped as being suitable for West Ham or Burnley. Albion fans (West Bromwich or Brighton, naturally) could buy a team clad in blue-and-white stripes, which also doubled up as Sheffield Wednesday.

It was never the most durable of games. The plastic corner flags did well if they survived the week, and the goalkeepers usually ended up being held together by pins. But who cared? He was still Jimmy Rimmer, and could beat off Paul Mariner or John Wark even with a nail through his legs.

Other aftermarket accessories included the polystyrene grandstands, which every schoolboy coveted right up until the clumsy move from uncle Fred left the impressive cantilever construction looking like a bomb site. Or Molineux during the Bhatti brothers' era.

For real one-upmanship, though, there was nothing to beat the working floodlights mounted on flimsy white pylons. Sure, they served little purpose, but when it came to the cool stakes, they beat Pong hands down.

They even sold plastic trophies. It had always been my intention to get the European Cup following Villa's triumph at Rotterdam in 1982, but I never got round to it, and if memory serves me right, I decided to make one from tinfoil instead. Still, it beat a virtual European Cup any day.

Flick to kick versus click to kick? No contest.